Nightmares and Dreamscapes
by Pegasus
Summary: A kinda smushy Remy/Rogue thing. Was buzzing round my head and demanded release - so here it is.


**DISCLAIMER: The characters in this story belong to Marvel. No infringement intended, blah,blah,blah. Please, please, please do not reproduce this story in part or in whole anywhere without at least asking me first! Thank you...**

email me at [Sarah.Watkins@onyx.net][1]

**Nightmares and Dreamscapes**

_Author's Note: This fic has gone through many incarnations. It started out as a Remy-only fic, then was adapted to an RPG, and has ended up...precisely here. It's kind of strange, and hopefully the use of typeface will help the reader see the different points of view easily._

_~ ~ ~_

_Antarctica. _

_The frozen wastelands of the South Pole. _

_Ironic. He is a Southern boy born and bred, but grew up with weather conditions somewhat more favourable than this. Painfully and slowly he drags himself through the snow and ice of the Vinson Massif. _

_Strange memories of his schooldays keep flitting into his exhausted mind. This place is technically a desert. The most arid place on Earth. "Dieu," he murmurs. "I'd give my right arm t'see a cactus right now." _

_He plods onwards. _

_He is dreaming. He knows he is dreaming. but this memory is as vivid and - downright cold - as the day it happened. He cannot waken. The sleep is too deep. He wants to stop the momentum of this nightmare. He knows where it goes - he's lived it too many times already. _

_It is a struggle of utter futility. He accepts his fate and goes with the flow._

* * *

Rogue is also dreaming. Unlike Remy LeBeau, she welcomes the dreamworld. There she can touch, she can be what she continually refers to as 'normal'.

She does not know where to start looking for him in this endlessly shifting landscape. Every night is the same. Her search for him ends in her tearing her hair outi n frustration. Like his memories, Remy keeps his dreams tightly cocooned in a psionic shield. But she will find a way through.

This is a skill of hers she has never shared with him before, a skill she is not sure whether or not even Professor Xavier is aware of . Her ability to enter the dreamscapes of others. It has provided Rogue with many insights into her fellow X-Men. And also caused her to blush fiercely at Logan for no obvious reason whenever she catches him alone with Jean.

Sighing, she flits across the Dreamscape, searching for the signature red glow that she has almost caught so many times but which has eluded her.

* * *

_He does not know where he is going, neither does he know how or even if he will survive. Already suffering with sunburn and partial snow blindness, it is only through sheer dint of effort that he is keeping anywhere near warm. A simple, inwardly directed kinetic charge warms his body for a period of two hours at a time. But this is not a long- term solution. His mutant ability will not keep him alive forever. His internal organs will combust and wither away while he freezes to death in utter agony. _

_Where will he go? _

_He rests up for a while, up against the edge of a sheer cliff, that offers him minimal protection from the blizzard. Closing his eyes, strange, blood red eyes that stand out amongst the whiteness, Remy LeBeau wills happier images into his head than that of his own rotting corpse. _

_Always her face. Always the memory of her sharing that forbidden kiss with him. Always the knowledge that he has forgiven her already for abandoning him in this hellhole. He knows she will never come back for him - damn woman is nearly as stubborn as he is. _

_"Chere..." he mumbles, shivering and pulling another internal charge. The slow heat works through his body, warming his flesh, but not his soul. _

_That froze the day she left him. _

_Closing his eyes against the biting winds that bring tears to his eyes, he mumbles again. "Trouvez-l'à votre coeur pour me pardonner*" _

_He sleeps, not knowing if he will wake. _

_*Find it in your heart to forgive me. SW_

* * *

She can sense him, but does not know how to break in. Remy, let me in, she begs of him. Open up to me and let me in.

Where is he?

If she were Remy LeBeau, where would she spend her sleeping hours?

Another epiphany.

* * *

_"I am dying." _

_It is a harsh, but simple truth that he cannot - will not - accept. Remy LeBeau is determined that he will not die. Not yet, anyway. "I intend t'live f'rever," he would joke as a young man in New Orleans. "Jus' t'annoy th' hell outta y'all." _

_He curses himself softly in his native Creole. His own voice seems abrasive and intrusive in the blanketed silence around him. Almost ashamed at breaking the serenity, he turns his thoughts inwards. _

_"I am dying." _

_Again, the thought. _

_"If th' cold don't do f'r me, den it'll be th' hunger." _

_He is, he realises, afraid. _

_Not of dying, no. Remy LeBeau lost his fear of death many years ago. No, he is afraid of surviving. Surviving the ravages of this barren land and returning to a civilisation that will not accept him. But he cannot just allow himself to die. His psyche will not allow it. He will press on until the last gasp of life leaves his body in a cloud of cold vapour. _

_"Least I gotta tan t'show f'r my trip," he says, addressing the air. He has taken, of late, to speaking to himself. He is his only company and finds that he can have interesting, if sometimes heated, debates with himself. The sunburn is bearable. The frostbite is harder. But it is the hunger - the gnawing pain in his empty stomach - that he can deny no longer. He must eat. _

* * *

Scaling the pinnacle of Remy's consciousness has been an arduous task for Rogue, a task which has exhausted her. But she is here now, at the fortress of his memories. She now faces the job of working out the way to reach him.

* * *

_He seems impervious now to the constant temperature. He gave up the kinetic charges a day or so ago after the pain in his chest grew to insufferable levels. It did him more harm than good. _

_He walks on through the snow, the rapidly descending flakes quickly covering all traces of his ever having been there. _

_The citadel seems to hang in space. _

_He stares at it for what feels like an eternity. _

_"Ce doit être un mirage, non?"* _

_How or why are not questions that make the full journey from his exhausted mind. All he can see now is a potential haven, a sanctuary that might just give him the answers to the unanswerable. Energy somehow renewed, Gambit presses on. _

_*that must be a mirage, no? – SW_

_"I. Am. Dreaming."_

* * *

The realisation that he is dreaming, the actual acceptance of it opens a chink in his armour. Rogue begins to understand. To know Remy LeBeau is to know his pain. She wills to mind, against her greater wish, one of her more painful memories. A memory that will help her reach his level of desolation.

_Relentless and unforgiving, the memories press on unabated. They are becoming spasmodic and disjointed now, confused and unsure. They do not cohere – are babbled images and sights._

_The dreams begin to blend and conjoin. Remy in his ice field, Rogue on her trip to Canada. They are headed towards one another, on a set course to collison._

The coach driver screams at Rogue. "Get out of my vehicle, you mutant scum!"

_The citadel is falling down around his ears, crumbling as he draws one ragged breath after another. What is this place? Why the strong sensation of familiarity?_

She stands at the roadside, weeping.

_Magneto's Antarctic Citadel._

_The psionic essence of the wraith-woman...Mary Purcell - the wraith who promises to help Remy reach the Savage Land in return for letting her bond to him._

_The sensations that flow through him as she tries to force him to merge his body with her mind – the resistance, the hunger, the absolute power. The knowledge that she is subtly yet expertly manipulating his powers to greater and greater heights. _

The knowledge that she is forever going to be rejected by her peers, by - by normal people. The pain that this epiphany brings her...

_He can explode people from the inside out if he wants to. No longer does he have to touch things to kinetically charge them. He just has to imagine the WA~CHOOM! And it happens. His powers are spiralling out of control – again. The pain that this epiphany brings him..._

Brings them together.

_His debt to the New Son. The debt he must pay back in full. Gambit might be many t'ings, chere, but he ain't no debtor._

I know that, Remy.

_Chere?_

_Interruption._

_His return to the X-Men. Keeping the knowledge of his advanced and uncontrollable powers from them. Although now...now the secret is shared._

_Remy LeBeau can kill with a glance. He is a dangerous man. _

_His powers are no longer limited to inanimate objects. He can charge organic matter if he so chooses._

_He chooses not to, because, deep down, Remy LeBeau is a good man. _

We all know that, Remy. 

_And Rogue?_

_He loves her._

I love you, too.

_He...can't let himself love her. What he is. What he's done. She may eventually find it in herself to forgive him. For what happened to the Morlocks. For everything that he has ever done to condemn himself._

Remy...

_But he cannot forgive himself. _

I love...

_Never..._

Remy!

_Forgive..._

Forgive me...please.

_The final image is that of Rogue herself. Of the face that has kept Remy LeBeau willing to undergo the most intense ordeal any one individual should have to suffer. Of the love he holds for her like a candle to the darkness. Of the dreams he has of someday making her his. Of someday finding the courage and inner strength to forgive himself for his crimes._

She sees his much-loved face in their now entwined dream. On this level, she can touch him. She can take his chin in her hand, place her lips on his, give him the strength that her body heat can give him. We all understand why, Remy. But you have to accept what is past and move on.

_Give me the strength to move on. _

Move on, Remy. I'm here to help you.

_She loves me. His thoughts are filled with a childlike wonderment that fills Rogue's eyes with tears as she breaks the tenuous link between them._

They awake, each in the darkness of their separate rooms, each with tears on their faces. Tears of grief mingle with tears of joy. They have united in a way that physical contact could never match. The carnal lusts of most people is something that is on a level beneath them. They are conjoined in spirit, they are soul mates.

And that is something that noone else can touch.

**(c) S Watkins, 2000**

   [1]: mailto:sarah.watkins@onyx.net



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